Blog Category: Clients

I recently had the honor of participating in a signing ceremony hosted by our client, Jingcheng Group for the Jingcheng Ruili Bay International Resort. George Berean and Trey Frank were also there to represent WATG.

The ceremony was attended by our client representatives, local government officials, and the media. The ceremony was featured on local news stations that evening.

We look forward to working with a great client on this exciting development. The resort will be in Ruili, Yunnan Province and will include a five-star hotel, villas, townhouses, and spa. Ruili is located in southwestern Yunnan province, adjacent northeastern Myanmar. It's an ethnically diverse city with a beautiful natural landscape. Ruili is one of the major border land port cities in Yunnan, under Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture.
 

On April 2nd I had the privilege of attending a luncheon hosted by the University of Hawaii School of Travel Industry Management honoring His Excellency Mohamed Rachad Bouhlal, Ambassador to the United States for the Kingdom of Morocco, and several other delegates; President of the Rabat-Sale-Zemmour-Zaer Region Council, M.M. Bouamor Taghouan; Director General of the Agency of the South, M. Ahmed Hajji and Secretary General of Economic and Social Council of Morocco, M. Driss Guerraui. The luncheon celebrated the Morocco-Hawaii Sister State relationship and the donation of an authentic Moroccan fountain to be installed on the grounds of the Hawaii State Art Museum along Richards Street.

As a representative of WATG, I conveyed our firm's design philosophy and its alignment with the Ambassador's vision for development and tourism in Morocco. WATG is already doing work in the region, so Ambassador Bouhlal was intrigued by our portfolio of world-wide projects as we discussed strategies to further tourism through planning and architecture.

We look forward to a long working relationship and collaborating to bring tourism to the region.

WATG, Belt Collins International, Hilton International, PIA International, John Chan Designs, GOCO Hospitality, and Ningbo Sunland Real Estate Company gathered in Xiangshan, China for a final meeting. This completes our design for the Hilton Xiangshan Resort Hotel. The project features 16 hotel villas, a presidential villa, and a wellness center.

We were featured on the local news that evening! And we dined with the Deputy County Governor of the People's Government of Xiangshan County, Qiu Jinyue.

About a year ago I saw a short movie made by someone who travels a lot for his work. Inspired by what I saw, I decided to make my own to show my family what it's like on one of our trips. Last November I had a long trip to Vietnam & China which seemed like a good opportunity to make a movie. This is the result.

WATG's Honolulu office is in the midst of a very special partnership with a non-profit community organization, Te Taki Tokelau, Inc. Our role has been to take the first steps toward helping the group build or acquire a permanent community center and language school.

Tokelau is comprised of four coral atolls north of Samoa with a total land area of 3.9 square miles. While there are only about 10,000 Tokelauans in the world, about 1,000 live in Hawai'i.  The majority of them are here because of their forcible removal in 1953.  With no right of return to their homeland, the Tokelauan community in Hawai'i is committed to preserving its culture and language and needs a dedicated space for their operations.

Members of WATG's Honolulu office began  by helping the community start to imagine exactly what was needed.  Since most funders want to see what will be built before they award money, WATG was asked to produce initial concepts, rough building plans, and a sense of the architectural character.

While the designers at WATG are masters of creating projects that heighten the experience of a unique location, this process was different. Our challenge was to imagine a building that could transport people from an environment in Hawaii to a remote coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific where life is wholly dependent on the ocean and reef networks and whose highest point is a mere 2 meters above sea level.  In the islands of Tokelau the concepts of sustainability and community are not buzzwords; they are about survival.

We had 23 people donate their lunch hour for an in-house charrette. The schemes ranged from large-scale complexes to small, movable buildings (one even included a volcano).

Ten days after this first charrette, six WATG designers and their families spent a Saturday afternoon with the students, teachers, and elders of the Te Taki community.  We were greeted with traditional song and dance and deep appreciation from the Tokelauan families.  We ultimately ended up with three different schemes that used pieces from many of the initial charrette ideas: a smaller, easily-phased building; a bigger, more iconic building; and a more expansive and ambitious master plan should Te Taki encounter a larger piece of land available for community groups.

Over the next few weeks we will provide Te Taki with more refined options as well as some rough cost estimates provided by a local cost estimating firm that has donated its services.  This will allow them to have an accurate starting point to begin looking at potential sites and funding. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a longer relationship and a way for us to give back to the broader Polynesian community whose home we share here in the middle of the Pacific.  For those of us involved, the experience deepened our understanding of what Aloha truly is. Stay tuned for more updates as this process moves forward.

So we're in St. Petersburg, Russia, working on the Chernomoritz Spa Hotel Resort in Sochi, Russia for the next winter Olympics in 2014. It's February. Let me fill you in on what that means exactly:
  •  Average temperatures of between -5° C and -10° C…  
  •  Ice and snow—everywhere...
  •  The main front door and windows at the local architects offices freeze shut from time to time...
  •  The Neva River (which is about 3 times the width of the Thames in London) resembles a large ice rink…
  •  Frostbitten fingers (OK, turns out they were just really cold). South Africa definitely wasn't the best breeding ground for these temperatures.

Seriously, this place does not take prisoners-the average London winter wardrobe doesn't quite cut it outside of the office or hotel.

Week 1 was all about acclimatisation...
Every morning started with a full spread for breakfast-excellent.  This was followed by a quick walk to the office; luckily, the hotel was right around the corner from the offices we were stationed at (thank you, admin staff). The hours were quite long but nothing outside the realm of normality for an architect. We got some quality work done and the project seemed to be under control (well, as much as a bull rider believes he is controlling the bull). We flew into the first weekend and, armed with my European Cities Guide Book (thank you, Angela Wareham, London Interiors), I headed off to the main site in St. Petersburg, the State Hermitage or Winter Palace. It is absolutely beautiful, and if you get a chance one day, you really should try to see it. The urban planning of St. Petersburg ties in so closely with the palace's planning, so it really is a pleasure to experience. The interiors are also quite a sight.

Week 2 flew by in a matter of heart beats. Two of my bosses flew down for meetings, and it was great to spend some time conversing solely in English. Before I knew it, it was the weekend again and, after finally realising that all the other people wearing jeans actually had thermals on underneath, we were off to the market. One of the local architects (Kirill Spirin, who is working hard on his English) took my colleague Diana Osman and me to see a few hidden gems. The first stop was the Russian military surplus store. What a perfect guy shop! Not sure if Diana will agree, but this was a highlight (I am still regretting not investing in a pair of night vision goggles). After that, we went to a lovely little cafe for lunch and then to the local market to buy the necessary winter wears. Towards evening it was definitely close to -20° C.

Week 3: Armed with my new and improved wardrobe, the temperatures this week aren't so bad. The first deadline is this Friday, so work is cranking up a notch, which is still enjoyable. It feels good to be performing such an integral role in such a high profile project. The queries are flying and I must thank the entire Sochi team back in London for their sterling work. The feedback has been fast and furious—you can really feel the presence of the large team back home as they exercise their full intellectual muscle.

So our return flights are booked and we have just a few days left here in St. Petersburg. It's been a steep learning curve and an amazing experience, so thank you WATG for this wonderful opportunity.

Blogging is a vehicle for sharing ideas, information and points of view. And WATG's blog has been successful in giving over 50 staff members an opportunity to do just that.

In the first 11 months of this year, our architecture blog has been read by over 20,000 visitors to watg.com.

According to research conducted recently by HubSpot among 1,531 businesses, in addition to driving traffic to one's website, the benefits of blogging include lead generation and customer acquisition. And, as you can see from the chart below, the more often you blog, the more likely you are to create new business opportunities.

Breaking news: I am pleased to report that we got our first job that can be attributed directly to a blog.

You might call this concrete evidence of our blog's ROI (Return on Internet).

It's really satisfying to see one of our most interesting jobs, with such a great client—Haluk Kaya, covered on CNN.

We've been on this one as master planners from the very beginning and have thoroughly enjoyed the journey with Bekay Property Partners. Turkey is a really exciting market for us and the strength of the team on Olivion—from the visionary client through to the consultant group—is apparent. We all share an infectious enthusiasm and desire to see the successful realization of a great master plan in the very near future.

Things are bigger in China, as you can see. As part of our project introduction, we toured many locations in the new city of Ordos in Inner Mongolia. The goal was to see the icons and culture of the region that we could incorporate into the story of the new hotel project.

Here vice president Bill Reed stands in the foreground of one of four magnificently large scale sculptures that pay homage to the great Genghis Khan.

 

Amazing attention to details can be seen on the faces of each of the 50 warriors as part of this sculpture.

 

The wonderful world of Ordos! Sometimes on trips we forget where we are. One location looks like the last after weeks on the road. But, not on this trip. One morning before being picked up for our meetings, Bill and I took a stroll around the cultural center of the new city of Ordos. We found ourselves on what just happened to be a yellow brick road. This took us to a long landscape plaza reminiscent of our own National Mall in Washington DC.

It took just under a year after the property opened but at the end of January, we received word posted on our USGBC project site that Bardessono had completed the final certification review and was being awarded Platinum certification. Talk about wanting to turn cartwheels in the office and scream FINALLY! What a relief. I have to say, the review process was challenging, interesting and stressful towards the end. We ran into a few hiccups – having to issue clarifications, reissuing information that the review team had received yet we believe was lost at some point. Checking and rechecking – dotting I’s and crossing T’s. During that time in the back of my mind I thought – what if we miss this and receive LEED Gold – do we write Highest Amount Gold Points Achieved below the plaque? Missed it by ONE point? No – that wouldn’t do. In the end, the perseverance of a dedicated design team along with a determined owner/client paid off. Bardessono is an excellent product and I understand it’s faring well despite the economy. Guests are impressed and have returned. I’d do it all again, in a heartbeat.